only organized moral force he saw in the Spanish
resistance. Poetry became for Neruda a political
act, an act of peace. In 1948, President Gonza ́lez
Videla of Chile ordered Neruda’s arrest for his
leftist criticism. Communism was outlawed in
Chile. Neruda had another formative experience
when the common people of Chile risked their lives
to hide him and his wife from authorities and
helped him escape the country. HisCanto general
(1950) is a tribute to the working people and to
Communism, calling for solidarity and change.
Neruda spent some years in exile, having to travel
from country to country, to avoid being arrested.
He was offered asylum in Capri, Italy, and spent
time there with his soon to be third wife, Matilde
Urrutia. The love poems he wrote her (The Cap-
tain’s Verses, 1952) include a militant theme of
the lover as political comrade.One Hundred Love
Sonnets(1959), though focused on Matilde, still
espouses a desire for bread for the common man
(‘‘Sonnet LXXX’’).
The Cold War and the Cuban Revolution
The Communist government of Fidel Castro,
introduced with the Cuban Revolution of 1959,
changed the political dynamics of the American
hemisphere. The U.S. government began interfer-
ing in South American politics to prevent the
spread of Communism in its cold war with the
Soviet Union. Latin America was a scene of polit-
ical violence in the 1960s and 1970s, as military
regimes with their human rights violations were
backed by U.S. support in the attempt to block
more Communist takeovers. The climate gave rise
to a new generation of radical writers (Latin Amer-
ican Boom). South American leftist and liberal
artists, such as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcı ́a
Ma ́rquez, and Julio Corta ́zar, saw Pablo Neruda
as a seasoned radical writer, politician, and moral
leader. These writers joined him in becoming pub-
lic spokespersons through their poetry and novel
readings, to make the South American countries
more aware of their solidarity against foreign inter-
ference. Neruda had gone to the Soviet Union in
1953 to accept the Stalin Peace Prize, and he visited
Cuba and met with Che Guevara and Castro. He
wrote odes to Stalin and Castro, and though later
he was sorry he supported Stalin, he never recanted
his commitment to communism. It was commonly
acknowledged that Neruda’s Nobel Prize wasCOMPARE
&
CONTRAST 1959:The indigenous people of the Arauca-
nian culture, the Mapuche, are impoverished
andlivingonreservationsorinthemountains
of Chile as the European settlers occupy their
fertile ancestral farmland. Neruda champions
their cause in his poetry and politics.
Today: Indigenous people participate in
Chile’s government, and their demand for fun-
damental changes in the national constitution
to recognize a multi-ethnic society is being
implemented.
1959:Castro’s revolution in Cuba brings the
cold war to South America with the USSR
and the United States interfering in Chile’s
politics. While Chileans try to decide whether
to go for a market economy or socialism toaddress Chile’s inequities, the KGB and CIA
initiate covert operations.
Today:After the repressive military regime
of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s,
in which thousands of Chileans are killed,
Chile returns to a democracy and a market
economy with its first woman president,
Michelle Bachelet, of the Socialist Party.
1959:Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral is one
of the few known female authors in a male-
dominated literary scene.
Today:Female authors write international
bestselling poetry, fiction, and memoirs,
including Isabel Allende, Marı ́a Luisa Bom-
bal, Brenda Hughes, and Matilde Urrutia,
Neruda’s wife.Sonnet LXXXIX